Introduction

1Representing the majority of companies in Europe (European Commission, 2014), small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly recognised as important actors in regard to job and wealth creation (Daly & McCann, 1992; Floyd & McManus, 2005; Lauder et al., 1994; O’Regan & Ghobadian, 2004; Salvador et al., 2013; 2014).

2Notwithstanding, SMEs usually have limited resources, which could influence their growth and development (Julien & Manchesnay, 1988; Kim et al., 2015; Nicolescu, 2009; North et al., 2001). Pullen et al. (2008: 2) argued that “SMEs need to focus on core competencies for efficiency matters, and they need to cooperate with external partners to compensate for other competences and resources”. To overcome this lack of resources and, thus, ensure their survival and growth, a solution may be represented by external support providers (Carey, 2015; Carey & Tanewski, 2016; Jay & Schaper, 2003; Kent, 1994). External consultants could help the SME develop strategies for growth or organizational change and strategic renewal as well as employ new management ideas: in short, they could play a key role in introducing managerial innovations (Damanpour & Schneider, 2009; Damanpour & Aravind, 2012; Wright et al., 2012). The consultancy market, through the work for one client, could even contribute to the development of new organizational forms or management systems successively implemented in several other companies [1].

3External support refers to all kinds of services provided by actors outside the concerned company (Srinivasan, 2014). It may essentially consist of helping the company in a defined area by offering knowledge, experience, and competences which the company cannot access through its internal resources. Generally speaking, “smart outsiders” aim to help to solve a problem that the company is facing or to improve its management competencies or strategy through their consulting activities (Christensen et al., 2013). The final purpose is to develop and enhance the company’s activities and performance. The impact of consultancy has been both understated and overstated in the literature and this activity has been regarded as fascinating on the one hand as well as ambiguous and uncertain on the other hand (Sturdy, 2011).

4External support can be provided at different levels, according to the type of entity providers: from simple knowledge transfer to direct implementation in the company system. The type of support providers is also important as they are varied (Bennett & Robson, 1999; Ramsden & Bennett, 2005). The literature (Bennett & Robson, 1999; Berry et al., 2006) identifies, among others, consulting agencies, trainers, government agencies, and professional specialists. Otherwise, Soriano et al. (2002) suggest that the advisors should, in all cases, train the owner–managers when offering their services [2].

5Nonetheless, Glodek et al. (2016) have recently underlined that the contribution of business advice to the development process of SMEs is still poorly understood. Following the “need to re-think and re-evaluate the image and role of management consultancy more generally” highlighted by Sturdy et al. (2009: 645), the aim of this article is to understand the actual SMEs’ “practices and perceptions” (Sturdy, 1997) of the consultancy market and, consequently, to advance useful recommendations for improving the weak demand from this particular kind of company. We will consider external support providers as all the public or private actors able to deliver knowledge which is not available at an internal level in a firm and which is offered as a commercial service (Curran, 2000; Gibb, 2000).

6A questionnaire investigation was undertaken between September and October 2015 in companies located in the Drôme area in France. The Drôme department can be considered a representative example: this area is part of the Rhône-Alpes region, which benefits from governmental support services (such as “plan PME” [3]). Drôme is, therefore, a well representative example of the French national market of SMEs (INSEE, 2013). Last but not least, Sturdy (2011) highlighted the wide quantity of studies on consultancy at a general level but scarce knowledge about detailed practices and activities. In line with this reasoning, we contribute to the existing literature through a detailed and specific case-study analysis focused on the French Drôme area.

7The main findings from our analysis underline the pivotal role played by a long-lasting relationship and a specialisation in the sector of activity of the SME. Trust, experience and expertise seem to be the keywords. Consultants have to be able to provide original and creative solutions that are strictly linked to the consultants’ commitment of gaining SMEs’ trust and building strong ties and networking (Granovetter, 1973; Coleman, 1988; Morgan, Hunt, 1994) in order to overcome the distrust (Connelly et al., 2012) and autonomy propensity of SMEs.

8The article is structured as follows: Section 1 provides an overview about the positive and negative image of consultancy in the academic literature. Section 2 provides some insight into the main specificities of SMEs and the reasons for the weak demand for consulting services while Section 3 underlines the key role played by trust and social networks. Section 4 describes the methodology adopted, while Section 5 presents some descriptive statistics from the questionnaires received. Section 6 underlines the cluster analysis findings. Finally, Section 7 provides a discussion and some concluding remarks.

1 – Consultancy in the academic literature: appreciations and criticism

9The world of consulting is ancient and it has for long been characterized by stability and immutability: its fundamental business model was focused on “opacity and agility” and it did not change for many years because what consultants did used to work well (Christensen et al., 2013) and there was a sort of fascination around consultancy activities (Sturdy, 2011). Fincham et al. (2008) highlighted the image of “expert outsiders”, marginal but powerful figures, playing a role of intermediaries usually seen as “sector specialists”. Wright et al. (2012) underlined the significant role of consultants in management innovation using standardized practices. In general, research about management consulting was characterized by a first phase of “organization development” looking at the effectiveness of consulting activities, and a second phase of “critical assessment” about the nature of knowledge held by consultants (Fincham, Clark, 2002, 2003; Hicks et al., 2009). Even if there is no consensus about what constitutes effectively management consultancy, consulting activities are in essence a knowledge-intensive business characterized by an intangible nature and a consequent uncertainty (Sturdy et al., 2013; Baaij, 2014).

10According to Mosley (1970), management consulting reached maturity in the 1960s: external experts started to be solicited more and more for providing recommendations and helping solve critical problems or take decisions about the future strategy of the company. During the 1980s and the 1990s this industry assisted to an exceptional growth in many advanced economies (Fincham, Clark, 2003). Facing this increasing popularity of consulting practices, yet in 1970 Mosley alerted about the problem of unethical and incompetent practices in the field. Along this line of reasoning, recently Rival and Major (2018) even focused on ethical practices adopted by lobbying consulting profession in France, a country dominated by networks. And Sturdy (2011: 517) argued “for a more cautious and critical approach. This recognizes consultancy as an integral part of management, where its distinctive role lies more in its structural position and ambiguous visibility and accountability than its practices, skills or occupational/professional identity claims”.

11Lory and McCalman (2002) underlined the need to establish a “brand” in order to gain a legitimizing status: they highlighted the pivotal role played by the consultant, meaning the person that provides the consultancy activity. As the range of activities proposed is essentially the same, the real difference comes from reputation linked to quality of the service, experience and capability offering. To this aim, Lory and McCalman (2002) argued that intangible components of brands, like client relationships, are of key importance. Sturdy et al. (2013) even argued that a good relationship with clients and credibility building may be seen as necessary conditions for survival and success. As a matter of fact, clients have difficulties in judging consultancy’s performance in advance because they lack the knowledge and capability held by the external experts who have been recruited exactly for their smart capacities. This explains the pivotal role played by brand, reputation and social proof that replace an ex post verification of results (Christensen et al., 2013). Furthermore, this reveals the importance of knowledge components, difficult to identify and evaluate. To this aim, Hicks et al. (2009) remind that critiques [4] have been advanced by some management scholars that considered consulting knowledge as “a rhetorical construction” benefiting from the influent power of consultants (Fincham, Clark, 2002). Furthermore, Hicks et al. (2009) argued that knowledge transfer from external consultants to clients reveals usually poor results. The knowledge and expertise that consultants bring into the company led to define consultants themselves as the “shock troops” of the new age, the “key agents and symbols of contemporary social change”, the “capitalism’s commissars”, the “promoters of new management fashions”, “pre-eminent knowledge brokers” or knowledge mediators, “corporate puppets”, under a positive or negative association (O’Shea, Madigan, 1998; Fincham, Clark, 2003; Thrift, 2005; McKenna, 2006; Sturdy et al., 2009; Sturdy, 2011). Consultants may respond to the anxiety of clients through providing knowledge and new management fads that sometimes could reveal to be persuasive and confident but also ambiguous and rhetorical (Sturdy, 1997; Baaij, 2014). Sturdy (2009: 459) underlined the “constant questioning of the cost and value of consulting use”: consultant activities are sometimes perceived as expensive and ineffective and as a waste of valuable resources because of lack of novelty or substance of the underlining ideas (Fincham, Clark, 2003). Finally, ethical and sensitivity concerns are also raised: self-interest, arrogance and lack of sense of responsibility are sometimes reproved to consultants (Sturdy, 2009).

12Christensen et al. (2013) argued that disruption was starting to reshape also the consulting industry because of the arrival of sophisticated competitors using new business models. More specifically, “integrated solution shops” could be replaced by “modular providers”, meaning experts in one specific element of the value chain. This shift could comply with the clients’ needs of lower costs as well as more speed, responsiveness and control.

2 – SMEs and external consultants: Why is the demand weak?

13SMEs have attracted an increasing interest in the academic literature over the last decades: the positive and negative consequences of their smallness started to be investigated in-depth. In particular, a higher need for support is supposed and focus is given to the role played by the entrepreneur leading the company. A strong link between the demand for support, the entrepreneur’s perception about it and SMEs’ attitude to independence is expected. Furthermore, knowledge about the sector and industry specialization is also highlighted as a pivotal aspect. The specificity paradigm of SMEs is underlined as well as the importance played by trust (cf. Section 3). All these elements partly explain the difficulties in investigating the world of SMEs, the consequent lack of data and reliable theories and therefore a weak demand for external support.

14The academic literature has focused specifically on entrepreneurship and SMEs since the 1980s (Gibb, 2000; Marchesnay, 2003). Julien (1994) highlighted this trend of focusing more on SMEs than on large firms with the creation of several scientific journals specialised in SMEs. [5] Before this period, SMEs were described like a small version of larger firms (Torrès, 1997). Even if Penrose (1959) raised the important differences in the management of very large enterprises as opposed to very small ones, it is only at the end of the 1970s that SMEs came to be considered in the literature as a specific entity (cf. among others Gervais, 1978; Dandridge, 1979; Welsh & White, 1981).

15The most underlined characteristics of SMEs [6] are all linked to the “smallness” of the enterprise. Indeed, the size of an SME implies few hierarchical levels, the centralisation of the management, informal relationships based on trust development, limited internal resources, and low standardisation of the processes. Together, these determine the specific status of SMEs as companies having a typological diversity: it is difficult to classify a specific SME in a category because each SME has its own constructive and functional features (Nicolescu, 2009) due to the intuitive organisation built inside the enterprise.

16The literature supposes a higher need for support of SMEs because of their resources’ gap (Kent, 1994; Viljamaa, 2011). Boter and Lundstrom (2005) refer to the notion of smallness as a reason for this lack of resources: the smaller the enterprise, the fewer resources it has. In their study, they focus on the size dimension of small businesses to analyse how SMEs use the support services available on the market in Sweden. “The arguments from theory that small firms have a weak resource base and need external support does not translate into the smallest micro companies as the most intensive users of external support services.” (Boter & Lundstrom, 2005: 254).

17In recent years, the literature has taken an entrepreneurial approach [7] by focusing more on the support dedicated to the manager than to the company. This can be explained by the important role that the manager [8] has in an SME, where the power is centralised and, thus, the manager is quite the unique decision-maker (Gervais, 1978; Julien & Manchesnay, 1988). Some small companies are also owner-managed, thus the attitude towards external advisors can be different according to the owner’s profile. In general, Damanpour and Schneider (2009: 496) highlighted that “manager characteristics influence the adoption of innovation” in organizations. Consequently, support should be more focused on the manager, as Boter and Lundstrom (2005: 245) suggested by raising the question of “how to develop support structures for creating the necessary skills for entrepreneurs”. An “entrepreneur” approach in providing support can be an advantage: the support provider will make his recommendations directly to the manager and will not have to deal with several hierarchical levels. As Gilbert et al. (2006: 931) highlighted, doing business with a top management team, including several members, is more difficult and takes more time because the personal, educational, and experience background of each of them lead to disagreements between the team members. In this sense, providing support in an SME can be perceived as easier than doing it in a large firm, where the management is not centralised and where there are several decision-makers.

18Nonetheless, this can be a limitation of the demand for support, as it will depend on the entrepreneurial spirit of the single manager. Lightfoot (1998: 237) argued that “reluctance to accept external support has its roots in small business-owner psychology”. This idea is supported by Gilbert et al. (2006: 930), who highlight the important influence of the character traits of the entrepreneur on the firm’s growth. Also, the entrepreneurial spirit of the owner–manager can have a direct impact on the management behaviour and attitude at risk of the SME and, thus, lead to reluctance, and even a resistance, to contract external support services (North et al., 2001).

19The autonomy propensity and the independent entrepreneurial spirit are among the key characteristics of the owner–manager (Curran, 2000; Gilbert et al. 2006; Lightfoot, 1998; Van Gelderen & Jansen, 2006). As a consequence, this autonomy propensity in SMEs can be a reason why the demand from SME owner–managers for external support is weak. Thus, one reason why SMEs do not use external consulting is the fear of losing their autonomy (Curran, 2000; North et al., 2001).

20The question about the sector and industry specialisation is also raised, as the literature recognises the importance of the environment in which SMEs are located. Taking the example of the competencies required for a small high-tech growth business manager as opposed to a shopkeeper, Gibb (2000) argued that the competencies required will depend upon the “sector” of the SME. On the one hand, Curran (2000) highlighted that “sector ignorance” can be alleviated by targeted support. On the other hand, Nicolescu (2009) underlined that support providers do not specialise in a specific sector or industry because of the typological diversity of SMEs. Thus, according to him, the heterogeneity of SMEs does not allow a specification of support providers to typical SMEs’ organisational system, as they all differ from each other.

21Torrès and Plane (1998) questioned the specificities of SMEs rather than suggesting an adaptation by the support providers. Indeed, they highlighted the contradiction between the specificities of SMEs (such as informal management and centralisation) and the consulting market that requires more formalisation and a decentralisation of the management in order to be efficient. This contradiction underlines the notion of the specificity paradigm of SMEs. To move beyond it, they suggested a denaturation of traditional SMEs thanks to support providers in order to become what they defined as the managerial SME: an SME working as a large company with decentralisation, more formalisation, and planning. Nonetheless, this would require an attitude at change from SMEs, going beyond the obstacle of organisational inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1977, 1984, 1989; Hannan et al., 2004; Hannan, 2005).

22Last but not least, lack of theory and understanding can also be seen as one of the reasons for the weak demand for external support. Based on the work of Gorb et al. (1981), O’Regan and Ghobadian (2004: 64) highlighted the “paucity of research in general on SMEs and consequently a lack of understanding of their needs and requirements”. Moreover, Curran (2000: 44) considered the lack of theory as one of the main reasons why small business owners are reluctant to trust service providers. He clearly expressed this idea, stating “small businesses are not large business scaled down, and textbook and large enterprises’ good practice is often poorly suited to the needs of small businesses”. Furthermore, support services offered on the market have the aim to allow the growth of performance of SMEs (Srinivasan, 2014). Otherwise, growth can be influenced by several different factors. In such a context, consultants cannot necessarily take benefits from general economic theories or models (Gibb, 2000).

3 – The pivotal role played by trust and social networks

23The literature underlines the importance of the relationship and trust between the support provider and the SMEs’ owner–managers (Carey & Tanewski, 2016; Mole, 2002; Mughan et al., 2004). Mole (2002: 156) describes the advisor as “challenging the managing directors in their castle”. With a different perception, Ramsden and Bennett (2005: 228) also insist on the importance of the relationship between the two counterparties by highlighting that the success of the impact of advice, as a result of a joint activity, depends on “a combination of task-interaction, where the client and advisor exchange information on problems to be solved and means to accomplish them, with personal-interaction, where the client’s well-being is improved”. Trust-based interpersonal relationships are pivotal: as our analysis on the case of Drôme will show, consultants need to gain credibility and confidence in front of SMEs if they wish to be viewed as trustworthy. Trust can be defined as confidence in one’s expectations or in the goodwill of the partner: personal embeddedness is a necessary condition. Trust implies mutual confidence, a lower level of monitoring and the expectation that the partner will not behave opportunistically (Ring, Van de Ven, 1992; Dyer, Chu, 2003; Puranam, Vanneste, 2009). Trust is the glue that keeps together the business partners (Nooteboom, Noorderhaven, 1997). Vedel and Gabarret (2014) even argued that trust plays a role of mediator, in the context of French business incubators, between the contract and information disclosure and knowledge acquisition.

24Generally speaking, commitment, coordination and trust are considered in the literature as essential elements for partnerships success. Communication, collaboration and integration are required elements for maximizing the synergy (Revilla et al., 2005). Among others, Sherwood and Covin 2008, Bruneel et al. 2010, Bjerregaard 2010 and Niedergassel, Leker 2011 have highlighted the role and condition of trust between partners, their interdependency, the frequency of communication and closeness of partners: all these elements are vital for the success of an industrial alliance (Benghozi, Salvador, 2014). Nonetheless, building reputation, trust and legitimacy is a process that takes a lot of time (Chen, Wang, 2008). Initial distrust (Connelly et al., 2012) can be overcome only through stable and effective networks built on a long-lasting process that requires time, perseverance and patience (Salvador et al., 2014). Repeated interactions are necessary. Gulati (1995) even argued that trust is enhanced by familiarity and repeated ties that make it possible to predict others’ actions. When we talk about the notion of strength of interpersonal ties, we refer to the definition provided by Granovetter (1973: 1361): “the strength of a tie is a (probably linear) combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie”. Personal ties and connections built upon trust and closeness characterize social networks: Coleman (1988) argued that networking is an effective method for acquiring pivotal information that otherwise would be more expensive to acquire. And according to Morgan and Hunt (1994: 23), successful relationships marketing require cooperative behaviors led by “commitment and trust”: “a committed partner wants the relationship to endure indefinitely and is willing to work at maintaining it”. Nooteboom, and Noorderhaven (1997) talk about institutionalization (through repeated interactions) and habitualization (through habits formation) as two main dimensions of trust building.

25As shown by Salvador et al. (2014: 372) about European SMEs willing to enter the Brazilian market, even if the Internet and information and communication technologies (ICTs) have partially substituted or completed physical proximity, the building of trust and legitimacy still requires personal contacts and long-lasting working relationships have to be nurtured to allow for trust building through a process in which “network creation” is the condicio sine qua non.

26Starting from these assumptions and these different and/or complementary perspectives, our analysis aimed to contribute to the understanding of the actual SMEs’ “practices and perceptions” (Sturdy, 1997) of the consultancy market through an investigation focused on a French case-study. As highlighted in the following sections, the results from a recent questionnaire specifically addressed to SMEs’ managers enable us to feed the open debate about the relationship between SMEs and consultants through providing interesting and unexpected findings.

4 – Methodology

27To understand the point of view of SMEs regarding the consultancy market, a questionnaire was addressed exclusively to managers of SMEs in the department of Drôme. The choice of a focus on a very specific French area of analysis meets the need highlighted by Sturdy (2011) about adequate context research basis [9] and we follow Hlady Rispal and Jouison-Laffitte (2015) with an exploratory approach through a qualitative method [10] (i.e. cluster analysis technique), taking into account that “qualitative study can help, first of all, to better understand a phenomenon” [11] (Degeorge, 2015: 8). The questionnaire was fully answered by 38 respondents [12] between September and October 2015. To find a suitable sample of companies, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) of Drôme department was contacted. Public information from the CCI, as well as formal and informal contacts, helped in the building of a list of local SMEs. Furthermore, the Altarès [13] database was also used to complement our data. We tried to select companies from varied sectors to improve and justify the representativeness of our sample (Jack et al., 2008). Last but not least, five additional face to face interviews have been undertaken in September-October 2015 with consultants dealing in the department of Drôme: their point of view about their relationship and constraints with clients like SMEs has been useful for building the final version of the questionnaire and for nurturing the discussion of results from the SMEs’ investigation.

28The questionnaire was divided into three different sections:

1. General information about the respondent and the company, with questions about respondent’s position in the company, the educational level, the languages spoken, the sector of the company, the year of creation, the number of staff, and the level of turnover.
2. The consulting market perception with questions about the domains of advice the SME asked, frequency and satisfaction of the received support, the suggestions of the respondent to improve the consulting market, the reasons why the SME does not invest (more) in support services, the specific needs in advice, and the budget that the company would be ready to invest in such services.
3. The potential factors impacting the demand, with questions about the kinds of institution the SME would trust more and the most important factors in the choice.

29A cluster analysis [14] enabled the grouping of the different types of SMEs in order to define market segments for the support providers.

30Several different methods of cluster analysis exist; two-step clustering, which combines hierarchical and non-hierarchical methods, was finally chosen.

31The first step was to determine the clustering variables used for the cluster analysis. Kline (1994) suggests a sample size at least twice as large as the number of variables. Following this approach, 18 clustering variables have been selected. To select the variables, we decided to start from the main findings of the questionnaire, as described in the following descriptive statistics section. Table 5 in the Annex lists the 18 clustering variables and their characteristics.

32First, an analysis of the correlations between clustering variables was conducted; no problems of correlation emerged.

33Then, a two-step cluster analysis was undertaken, as the variables were both continuous and ordinal with different scale levels (Chiu et al., 2001; Norusis, 2009; Mooi & Sarstedt, 2011; Pullen et al., 2008). The distance measure used was the log-likelihood criterion.

34The best number of clusters was identified through the Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and Bayes information criterion (BIC), which are measures “of goodness-of-fit and are used to compare different solutions with different numbers of segments” (Mooi & Sarstedt, 2011: 279). Following Mooi and Sarstedt’s (2011) recommendations, in order to evaluate the stability of our results we ran the cluster analysis twice with the AIC and BIC criteria. No “outliers” cluster was detected.

35The following section will illustrate the descriptive results from the questionnaire investigation as well as the findings coming from the cluster analysis undertaken.

5 – Results: Descriptive statistics from the questionnaire

36The sectors in which the 38 respondents are active vary widely: most of the respondents work in the wholesale and retail trade (eight companies), manufacturing industry (seven) and real estate, renting, and business activities (five). Agriculture, construction, transport, health, and social works follow (three companies for every sector).

37In terms of company age, 16 companies were created during these last 10 years, while five were founded before 1975, 10 between 1976 and 2000, and seven between 2001 and 2005.

38The results suggest that 13 % of the respondents (five companies) never used support services against 87 % (33 companies) having a prior experience with external support. SMEs have been divided in group A (in blue colours), meaning companies that already contracted support services, and group B (in red colours), meaning companies that never contracted support services.

39The analysis of the main questions of the questionnaire reveals the preference for some kinds of consultancy (see Figure 1 for details). The frequency of use is between rarely to regularly and the satisfaction level is quite good. The investigation about reasons for not contracting (more or at all) external support services revealed that SMEs favour internal resources and fear finance constraints (cf. Figure 2). Finally, the questionnaire aimed at highlighting which factors would enhance the demand for support services. Surprisingly, web platforms, business schools and banks’ office for company services are the least preferred structures. The most preferred are institutions specialised in the SME sector, independent consultants supporting the company on a long-term basis and private entities with the required specialization. The experience of the advisor and the relationship and trust built between the SME and the consultant are the most important factors when choosing external services (see Figure 3).

5.1 – SMEs’ evaluation about their need for consulting support: the leading role played by consultancy in finance and accounting

40Consultancy in finance and accounting is the domain that is most used by the respondents (17 companies), before management and organisation consultancy (11 companies), information technology (nine), marketing & communication consultancy (nine), and business development (eight). Human resources and recruitment consultancy is the least used (only four companies).

41Furthermore, the results highlighted that 92 % of the respondents use three or fewer kinds of support services in their company. Only three companies use more than three kinds of consultancy, including a unique one using all of the seven kinds of consultancy (see Figure 1) suggested in the questionnaire.

Figure 1

How would you evaluate your need for consulting support?

How would you evaluate your need for consulting support?

42Two specific questions were addressed to companies which already contracted external support services (33 companies). These questions were about the frequency of use and the satisfaction level. Frequency has been measured using a 3-point Likert scale. [15] Globally, most SMEs that already contracted support services use them “rarely” to “regularly”. Human resources & recruitment and finance & accounting are used “regularly” on average (mean values = 2). Regarding the satisfaction level, the question was asked on a 5-point Likert scale. [16] According to the results, the global satisfaction of support services used is between neutral and somewhat high, with a mean of the mean values of 3.86/5. All the means regarding the satisfaction level are higher than 3, meaning that, on average, no kind of consultancy was perceived negatively by the respondents. The domains in which the respondents were the most satisfied are marketing & communication, human resources & recruitment, and finance & accounting, with mean values of 4 for each one.

43We thought it relevant to ask the respondents assessing their need for support in order to deny the possibility of market saturation as a reason for the low demand for support. To achieve this aim, a question was addressed using a 5-point Likert scale for each of the consultancy domains suggested in the questionnaire (see Figure 1). As expected, the results highlight that, on average, SMEs that never contracted support services (Group B, in red) consider having a less important need for support than SMEs that already contracted such services (Group A, in blue).

44Nonetheless, the domain in which group B expressed higher needs than group A is business development. Group A underlined more need in finance & accounting (2.7/5).

45The figure also shows that none of the mean values is higher than 3, meaning that all the respondents evaluate their need for support as moderate. In any case, on average, no domains were indicated as being not needed at all, thus excluding the possibility of market saturation.

5.2 – Possible reasons for not contracting external support services: a willingness to favour internal resources and a finance gap

46A specific question aimed at understanding why SMEs’ managers do not contract (more or at all) external support services, by suggesting some possible reasons with a 5-point Likert scale (from 1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree) [17].

47Figure 2 shows the mean values for each of the suggestions, with a distinction between SMEs that already contracted support services (Group A in blue) and SMEs that did not (Group B in red). As expected, SMEs that never used support services consider these reasons at a higher level than SMEs that already used support services. But disappointing past experiences are not considered as a main reason for not contracting more support services (mean values 2.6). Both groups A and B also agree at the same level about the “specificity and complexity of the company” reason (respectively 3.03/5 and 3.4/5) and about the “time constraint” problem (respectively 3.09/5 and 3.6/5). Furthermore, the most important reasons for not contracting more support services are the willingness to favour internal resources and the limited financial means for both the groups (higher for Group B). Interestingly, the perception about lack of trust in external consultants revealed that group B agreed between “Neutral” to “Somewhat” (3.4/5), while group A chose “Somewhat disagree” (2/5). Perceptions also differ regarding “Contracting external support services would lead to radical changes within your company, changes that your company is not ready to face today”; group A was between “strongly” to “somewhat” disagree (1.91/5) and group B was neutral (3/5).

Figure 2

Why do you not use (more/any) external support services?

Why do you not use (more/any) external support services?

5.3 – Possible factors enhancing the demand for support services: experience, relationship and trust

48Following the analysis of the possible reasons for not contracting external support services, we also tried to determine which factors would enhance the demand for support services. We considered interesting to determine whether the kind of support structure can have an impact on the willingness of SMEs’ managers to invest in support services. Thus, we asked the respondents to classify different structures of support providers by order of preference. The questionnaire included the same question twice (business development and organisation & management), thus asking preferences about the structure or sources of support, but with a distinction about a selection of consultancy domains. [18]

49Globally, for both the questions, the most preferred suggestions were “an institution specialised in the sector of activity of the SME”, “an independent consultant accompanying the company on a long-term basis”, “a private entity specialised in the kind of support that the company is looking for”, and “support services offered by public entities”.

50Thus, the least preferred were “a web platform” (last position), “business school” and “banks’ office for company services”. Furthermore, when checking the total mean values, slight differences exist between the four first-ranked suggestions (until 0.38), while differences in rank means are much higher between ranks 4 and 5 (1.74), attesting that the “banks’ office for company services”, “web platform”, and “business school” are far away in terms of preferences.

51Finally, a question was addressed to all the respondents about the factors influencing their choice when looking for a support provider. Respondents were asked to indicate the degree of importance (from 1 = Not important at all to 5 = Very important) for each of the suggested factors. [19] Figure 3 presents the results with the rank means for each of the factors suggested, with a distinction between SMEs that already contracted support services (Group A in blue) and SMEs that did not (Group B in red).

Figure 3

Suppose that you need an external consultant for a purpose of your company, at which level would the following factors influence your choice?

Suppose that you need an external consultant for a purpose of your company, at which level would the following factors influence your choice?

52Globally, the most suggested factors seem to be moderately important, according to our sample, with rank means superior to 3. Surprisingly, SMEs that never contracted support services (Group B in red) indicated, on average, an importance of 2.4/5 for the price (thus being the lowest important factor), while the same respondents indicated the limited financial resources as one of the most important reasons for not contracting support services at all (Figure 2). According to SMEs that never contracted support services, the three most important factors when choosing an external support consultant would be the experience in the sector of activity of the company (4.2/5), the experience in the consultancy domain (3.8/5), and the relationship and trust the SME has with the consultant (3.8/5).

53SMEs that already contracted support services (Group A in blue) consider the same three factors as the most important ones, with the highest importance for the “relationship & trust” and “experience in the consultancy domain” factors (both 4.42/5), closely followed by the “experience in the sector of activity” (4.2/5). Therefore, by providing support on a long-term basis and being specialised in the sector of activity of SMEs, the consultants are supposed to meet the demand of SMEs’ managers at a higher level. Trust and experience seem to be the keywords.

6 – Cluster analysis results: three clusters with different orientations

54Following the descriptive statistics of the questionnaire sections, it was useful to complement these first results with a focus on the SMEs’ practices and perceptions of the consultancy market. The cluster analysis aimed at understanding and making clearer the specific components of the variables distinguishing the relationship between the consultancy market and SMEs. More precisely, it helped to highlight three main clusters, identified as follows. The two-step cluster analysis suggests a number of three clusters (with a consistency measure of 0.3, cf. Figure 4 in Annex). Cluster 1 counts 14 out of the 38 respondents (36.8 %), Cluster 2 includes 18 respondents (47.4 %), and Cluster 3 has six respondents (15.8 %). To understand how the clusters were determined, we looked at the most important variables that influenced the determination of clusters. In line with the descriptive statistics, the variables linked to support services provided by CCIs or other public entities for support in organisation & management (BINMana_Public, F = 75,757), a private entity specialised in the sector of activity for organisation & management (BINMana_SectorSpecial, F = 45,465), and an independent consultant accompanying the SME on a long-term basis for support in organisation & management (BINMana_IndepentdentLT, F = 25,053) are the most significantly influential ones (see Table 1 ANOVA in Annex).

55Cluster 1 seems to regroup mainly respondents preferring public institutions (mean = 0,86), while Cluster 2 gathers mostly respondents not preferring public institutions (mean = 0,17) but looking at relationships building (mean = 0,94). Cluster 3 regroups respondents focused on the use of internal resources (mean = 0,67).

56Figure 5 presents, on the left-hand side, the global importance attributed to each variable in the determination of the clusters: the darker the color, the more important its global impact in the determination of the clusters. The importance of predictors is also readable by cluster: the uppermost the variable is in a cluster, the more significant its role within the cluster, and vice versa. The right-hand side of the graph ranks the variables according to their importance.

Figure 5

Analysis of the clusters’ content

Analysis of the clusters’ content

57The different weight of the several variables in the three clusters makes it possible to describe in detail the content and characteristics of every cluster as identified by the two-steps cluster analysis results.

7 – Discussion and some concluding remarks

70The results of our analysis on French SMEs could appear a predicable outcome at first sight, but it really is not so. Following the ICT revolution and the rapid changes appearing in the Internet economy, one could expect to see new attitudes coming from flexible structures like SMEs. Actually, the SMEs of our sample still prefer to deal with physical persons, and they are not willing to trust digital solutions: surprisingly, web platforms turned out to be one of the least preferred sources of consultancy services. Yet, in the 1990s, Lauder et al. (1994: 9) highlighted that “irrespective of country, SMEs face common problems which impair both their performance and survival rate. Typically, these problems are: lack of managerial competence, under-capitalization, disadvantages of scale and failure to update market knowledge or adapt to new technologies”. Today, notwithstanding the Internet revolution and the diffusion of ICTs, we can highlight the persistence of what North et al. (2001: 309), talking about the use of external finance, defined as the “conservative attitudes of many SME owners and managers”. This creates a sort of paradoxical situation. On the one hand, SMEs are more flexible and more able to adapt to changes compared to large firms, and, as a consequence, they demand “personalised solutions”, as confirmed by consultants during direct interviews (October 2015). On the other hand, SMEs seem to maintain an organisational inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1977, 1984, 1989; Hannan et al., 2004; Hannan, 2005) given their resistance to adopt innovative solutions offered by the ICTs, such as the use of web-based platforms for external support services.

71Furthermore, the results of our analysis revealed the refusal of standardised services and the great importance played by ad hoc solutions: this means that, like in most of the sectors of the digital economy, creativity and originality will make the difference in the near future (Benghozi & Salvador, 2015). Creative thinking is pivotal to (management) innovation (Hamel, 2006). Therefore, service providers, notwithstanding their level of education, will have more chances to convince and be trusted by SMEs’ managers if they will be able to provide unique and original solutions that will help SMEs in assuring their autonomous differentiation compared to competitors. Nonetheless, these unique and creative solutions are strictly linked to the consultants’ commitment of gaining SMEs’ trust and building strong ties and networking (Granovetter, 1973; Coleman, 1988; Morgan, Hunt, 1994) in order to overcome the distrust (Connelly et al., 2012) and autonomy propensity of SMEs (cf following sections).